Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan for Monday 5 March 2018

8:00 AM.Why do we need a second language in our lives? New Zealand is still lagging behind on the international stage, as far as second language learning in school goes. That could be about to change. Read moreAudio, Gallery

3:06 PM.It's hard to avoid those excruciating moments when we cringe at something painfully awkward we’ve said or done. Author Melissa Dahl has survival tips in her book, Cringeworthy: A Theory of… Read moreAudio

The writer of the best email wins a copy of his novel, The Man Who Would Not See

1:10 First song

1:15 How are NZ's DIY skills?

The AA is extending its call-out service from cars to now include emergency maintenance jobs around your home. Like fixing a burst water pipe or getting you back in your house when you've locked yourself out.

These are pretty major tasks and it got us thinking about just what is the the state of the nation's DIY skills?

Mitre 10's tutor Stan Scott gives us his view

Photo: creative commons - pixabay - WikimediaImages

1:25 The power of the mind

Mindfulness is not an uncommon word nowadays but back in the 70s the movement was pretty much unheard of, until John Kehoe wrote his hugely popular book Mind Power.

Since then he's expanded the idea, selling millions of books and sharing his ideas with hundreds of thousands in workshops around the world.

He's in the country as part of his last ever tour.

John Kehoe Photo: Supplied

1:35 Homage to the landline phone

Here at RNZ, we love landlines.

They're solid. We get a clear line usually and there's no faffing about with speakerphones, bluetooth, reception problems and more.

And so when we saw Barbara Keys' story on The Conversation website saluting the social and historical benefits of the landline phone we thought we'd call her up.

Barbara Keys is an associate professor of US and International History at the University of Melbourne.

NZ Rotary telephone Photo: wikipedia

1:40 Sweet beaks

Sparrows at the University of Waikato have a sweet tooth - or should that be sweet beak.

Mike Davy is in his second year of doing a Masters in Biology on animal behaviour and he's researching the sparrows around campus after noticing that the birds were taking packets of sugar from the tables at the campus cafe.

Photo: creative commons - pixabay - RonPorter

1:45 Great album

2:10 Television Critic: Graeme Tuckett

2:20 When NZ almost legalised eugenic sterilisation

In 1928, New Zealand came very close to legalising eugenic sterilisation.

Hamish Spencer is a University of Otago geneticist contributed a chapter to the book Eugenics at the Edges of Empire, in which he reveals that NZ came close to giving a small committee the power to compulsarily sterilise what were then called the feeble-minded, unfit, degenerates and imbeciles.

Logo from the Second International Eugenics Conference, 1921, depicting eugenics as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. Photo: Public Domain

2:30 Expert feature: Paul Scoones on Dr Who

The ultimate authority on Dr Who in New Zealand is Paul Scoones. He ran the NZ Doctor Who Fan Club for about 20 years and has edited more than 50 issues of an award-winning Doctor Who fanzine.

He even found and returned to the BBC a missing episode of the programme!

So we thought who better to have on our expert segment to talk us through the BBC show, it's various actors and stories and why it is had such a profound effect on popular culture.

The eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith (BBC)

The eighth Doctor, Paul McGann (BBC)

The lost episode 'The Lion' that Paul Scoones discovered in Auckland

The fifth doctor, Peter Davison (BBC)

The ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston (BBC)

The fourth Doctor, Tom Baker (BBC)

The sixth Doctor, Colin Baker (BBC)

The second Doctor, Patrick Troughton (BBC)

The tenth Doctor, David Tennant (BBC)

The seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy (BBC)

The war Doctor, John Hurt (BBC)

The third Doctor, Jon Pertwee (BBC)

The first Doctor, William Hartnell (BBC)

The twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi (BBC)

Daleks (BBC)

The TARDIS time traveling machine (BBC)

Gallifrey, the original home of the Time Lords (BBC)

3:10 How to handle humiliation

Photo: supplied

It's hard to avoid those excruciating moments in life when we cringe at something we've said or done in a painfully awkward moment. It's more than just embarrassment. It's a human experience that can have big impacts on how we interact with other people.

Melissa Dahl is a senior editor at New York Magazine. She dives into the serious side of this social phenomenon and offers tips on how to handle humiliation in her new book, Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness.